Henry Clay Armstrong
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Armstrong, Henry Clay; East Alabama Male College; Confederate Army; Reconstruction; Alabama House of Representatives; Brazil; Auburn, AL
Henry Clay Armstrong was a student at the East Alabama Male College prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. After becoming a lawyer, he enlisted and became a captain in the Confederate Army where he served until the end of the war. During Reconstruction, he served as a state legislator, speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives, state superintendent of education, and eventually the Consulate General to Brazil. He returned to the EAMC where he served on the board of trustees and the executive council.
Joshua Shiver
Alabama Cultural Resource Survey
2014-12-5
Joshua Shiver
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James Ferguson Dowdell
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Dowdell, James Ferguson; East Alabama Male College; Auburn, AL
James Ferguson Dowdell served during the Civil War as the organizer and commander of the 37th Alabama infantry regiment. After the war, he assumed the presidency of the East Alabama Male College from 1866 to 1870.
Joshua Shiver
Alabama Cultural Resource Survey
2014-12-5
Joshua Shiver
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John Darby
Lee County, AL; Civil War; East Alabama Male College; Darby, John; Auburn, AL
A professor of natural science and one of the original trustees of the East Alabama Male College, he also taught chemistry and developed a “Prophylactic Fluid” which was widely used as a disinfectant and antiseptic by Civil War surgeons and hospitals. A potassium permanganate solution, it was probably made in a building close to where the president’s home stands today.
Joshua Shiver
Alabama Cultural Resource Survey
2014-12-5
Joshua Shiver
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William James Samford
Auburn, AL; Lee County, AL; Civil War; East Alabama Male College; Samford, William James; Confederate Army; Baker's Creek, Mississippi; Slaton, William F.; Johnson's Island; Lake Erie; Old Main Hall; Samford Hall
When the East Alabama Male College opened its doors in 1859, William James Samford was one of the first eighty students to enroll. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Samford enlisted as a private in the Confederate Army where he was soon promoted to Lieutenant. Serving primarily in the western theater of operations, he campaigned in Tennessee and Kentucky before he was captured at Baker's Creek, Mississippi in 1863. He then spent eighteen months in prison at the prisoner-of-war camp on Johnson's Island in Lake Erie where he met his former professor William F. Slaton.
After the war, he returned to Auburn for a year to farm and study law under his father, after which he served in both houses of the Alabama legislature and eventually in Congress where he appropriated money for the reconstruction of Old Main Hall which had burned to the ground in 1887. He became the 31st Governor of Alabama in 1900. The newly reconstructed building was named Samford Hall in his honor in 1929.
Joshua Shiver
<a href="http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-2015" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Encyclopedia of Alabama: William J Samford</a>
Alabama Cultural Resource Survey
2014-12-5
Joshua Shiver
<a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Encyclopedia of Alabama: William J Samford</a>
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William Lowndes Yancey
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Yancey, William Lowndes; Chambers County, AL; Secession; Pebble Hill
Before the outbreak of the Civil War, Yancey was a fiery orator and politician who ardently defended slavery and secession. Representing Chambers County during the Alabama secession convention, he voted for the state to leave the Union and during the war spearheaded a failed diplomatic attempt to coerce Europe into recognizing Confederate independence. The Yancey family spent many summers with the Scott family at Pebble Hill.
Joshua Shiver
Alabama Cultural Resource Survey
2014-12-5
Joshua Shiver
<a href="http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-2064" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Encyclopedia of Alabama: William Lowndes Yancey</a>
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